The Forgotten Feasts: Sukkot

The Feast of Tabernacles (or the Feast of Booths) is a glorious time of rejoicing. In fact, traditionally this feast is referred to as “The Season Of Our Joy”. This feast is meant to be a reminder if when our God guided us through the wilderness after Egypt and we lived in temporary dwelling places. The Hebrew name for the feast is “Sukkot”. As part of the feast all members of the Commonwealth of Israel are supposed to build a ‘Sukkah’ (a tent, of sorts) so they can be reminded of the time when their God brought them through the wilderness. Let’s look at the primary Scriptures for this festival.

Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the Israelites, saying, 'On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, this shall be the Feast of Booths for seven days for Yahweh. On the first day there shall be a holy assembly; you must not do any regular work. For seven days you must present an offering made by fire to Yahweh. On the eighth day it shall be a holy assembly for you, and you shall present an offering made by fire to Yahweh; it is a celebration; you must not do any regular work. "'These are Yahweh's festivals, which you must proclaim, holy assemblies to present an offering made by fire to Yahweh—burnt offering and grain offering, sacrifice and libations, each on its proper day—besides Yahweh's Sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides your vows and besides all your freewill offerings that you give to Yahweh. "'Surely on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, at your gathering the land's produce, you shall hold Yahweh's festival for seven days; on the first day there shall be a rest period and on the eighth day a rest period. And on the first day you shall take for yourselves the first fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees and branches of a leafy tree and of a brook's poplar trees, and you shall rejoice before Yahweh your God for seven days. And you must hold it as a festival for Yahweh for seven days in the year; it shall be a lasting statute throughout your generations; in the seventh month you must hold it. You must live in the booths for seven days; all the natives in Israel must live in the booths, so that your generations shall know that I made the Israelites live in booths when I brought them from the land of Egypt; I am Yahweh your God.'"
(Leviticus 23:33-43 LEB)

This feast can kind of be seen as the second half of the bookend of feasts; closing what was opened during Passover. Passover opened with a High Sabbath where no work was to be done and it also closed with a High Sabbath, too. Likewise, Sukkot opens and closes with High Sabbaths also. One of the differences is that while it is said that, “this shall be a Feast of Booths for seven days,” it is also commanded that on the eighth day shouldn’t do any regular work. So there are seven days to the feast but there are also eight. Biblically, seven is the number of completion and eight is the number of new beginnings. Prophetically, the Feast of Tabernacles would seem to be the time when Jesus would come back for His millennial reign to rule over His people on the earth. We know that the millennial reign of Christ is meant to be the sabbath millennium and a time of rest, but at the end of that thousand years the devil will be let out of Sheol for one final battle against God before he is thrown into the lake of fire. After he has finally been defeated there will commence an eight day, a time of new beginnings. We don’t know much about what will happen after the millennium but this eight day (or, the Great Day, as it’s traditionally referred to) is the day to celebrate God’s final victory over the dragon.

There are more than a few ways we can look at this festival and see spiritual meanings we can apply to our lives. Let’s look through a few of them and then I’ll leave it to you to see if you can come up with any more.

  1.     The Eighth Day – We’ve already mentioned this not too long ago but this is a time where we can celebrate our Father’s victory over the devil. While we know that the LORD’s victory has been assured from the foundation of the earth, this is a time that marks the final victory.

  2.     The Millennium – We’ve kind of already touched on this one, too, so we’ll just hit this real quick. As this is the last of the yearly Feasts, this one is the commencement of the Millennial reign of our Messiah on the earth. If you want to read more about the Millennium then I’d suggest you read the last nine chapters of the book of Ezekiel and chapter 20 of the book of Revelation. There are other places where you can go to gather information on the Millennium, but these are two good starting points.

       All Nations – There is another thing to look at concerning the Feast of Tabernacles when we’re looking at the millennial kingdom of Jesus, and that’s something that comes up in Zecheriah 14 (which is also about the Millennium, if you’re looking for more to read on this topic). We read, starting in verse 16:

And then every survivor from all those nations coming against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, and celebrate the Feast of Booths. And then whoever of the clans of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the king, Yahweh of hosts, it will not rain on them. And if the clan of Egypt will not go up and come in, on them will be that plague Yahweh inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths. This will be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths.

(Zechariah 14:16-19)

From this we can tell that, once we are in the Kingdom, we will be celebrating this Feast. And if we are to follow the words of our Messiah and “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” (Matt 6:33) then we should really be trying to do the things that we’ll be doing in the kingdom. But, if nothing else, this is a good reason for us to treat this feast as a rehearsal for the joy that is to come.

  3.     Bemidbar – Another way that you can look at this Feast is just a straightforward reading of the Scripture. The Hebrew world Bemidbar ( בְּמִדְבַּר – H4057) means “in the wilderness” and, in fact, that’s what the name of the book of Numbers is, in the Hebrew Bible. The book of Numbers is the story of the wilderness wonderings of the people of Israel. Since the LORD wanted Israel to celebrate this feast to remind them of how He brought them through their wilderness, we can do the same. We all have times where we’re in the wilderness. Maybe it’s not the wilderness of Sinai, but there are times where it feels like we’re spiritually wondering through the wilderness. Whether you’re in one of those times right now, or if you have the opportunity to celebrate coming out of the wilderness, this is a good time to reflect on how God can get you through our toughest trials.

  4.     Tabernacled Among Us – In the beginning of the book of John we read about the origins of Jesus, but unlike the other gospels John puts more of a focus on Jesus’s divine origin. In the course of his telling of the origins of Jesus he says the following, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”. At first glance, while this is certainly an important, HUGE concept that is worthy of much study, it doesn’t really appear that this would have much to do with the Feast of Tabernacles. But let’s look a little closer at the Greek word that’s translated as “dwelt”. The Greek word is “skenoo” (σκηνόω) and its primary meaning is “to tent” or “encamp”. In fact, if we look at some other translations we see that other translators have made decisions that look a lot closer to this meaning. The ISV says, “The World became flesh and lived among us,” but the notation provided is “Lit. pitched his tent”. And then when you look at translations which have more of an eye toward the Hebrew nature of the faith you find things like what the Tree of Life translation does, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacle among us…”. Some scholars believe that this inclusion indicates that Jesus was actually born during the Feast of Tablernacles, since this reference is given during John’s description of Jesus’s origin. In any case, this is a great time to remember how our Messiah came to earth and tabernacled among us, so that He could show us how to walk out our lives.

  5.     We Are Tabernacles – This is actually a pretty cool concept that we don’t usually spend enough time exploring. As believers in Messiah, this world is not our home. So these skin suits that we currently reside in are really just our temporary dwelling places. When the end of the age comes we will be given resurrection bodies. In 2 Corinthians 5 we read the following, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 1 Corinthians 15:35-49 goes a little bit more in depth on what our future tabernacles will be made of and verse 44 let’s us know that there are two different bodies (tabernacles) that we’re talking about here when Paul says, “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” 

  6.    River of Living Water – So one of the ceremonies which was performed every day during Sukkot was the water libation ceremony. Throughout the first seven days of the Feast priests got water from the Pool of Siloam and brought it to the temple where they poured it out at the base of the alter. Until, on the last day – the Great Day – when this ceremony was not performed, but there were several passages of scripture read. You can imagine, Jesus standing in the audience as the priests read Isaiah 55, “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters…”, they would then read out of Ezekiel and the whole crowd would hear the priests saying, “and there was water, flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east…” and then they would read Zecheriah 14 where it says, “And in that day it shall be – That living waters shall flow from Jerusalem.” And after all this is said, Jesus bellows out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believers in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” Many of us have grown up with this verse but have never really thought of the context that Jesus said it in.

  7.    Ingathering – Finally, we’ll look at what this Feast meant agriculturally. While the first two feasts of the year dealt with different forms of firstfruits (the third part of Passover is the celebration of the first fruits of the barley, and Pentecost deals with the harvest of the wheat), this third Feast was for all of the rest of the harvest. So if you’re a Christian out there looking forward to the final harvest of the saints, this just might be the festival for you.

As is usually the case, there’s so much more to this than we’ve gone over here, but I wanted to give you a quick overview of this joyous festival. We’re in the middle of it right now. Actually, by the time I get this posted it will probably be about done. Right now I’m in the middle of the woods enjoying some camping relaxation and there’s no internet, so this is just gonna have to get posted when I find a signal. Until then, I hope that everyone has been having a great week, and that you’ve found some time to rejoice in the grace of our Father.

Shalom!